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Retrospective: The Frozen Ghost (1945)

07 Thursday Jan 2021

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When I came to casting a retrospective of the Universal Inner Sanctum Mystery movies, I decided to watch them all fairly close together. As such, due to the similarity in style and substance, combined with the fact that Lon Chaney Jr. starred in all sic of the, a blurring of the narratives came about. 

In the case of The Frozen Ghost, I found that I struggled to bring to mind what actually occurred without looking it back up again. This is surely an indicator that the movie had little or no impact on me, which says a lot about my connection to the movie.

When I did research back into it again, the visuals soon sprang to mind and I was left pondering about why it didn’t resonate so well.

My resolution comes down to that the film was just a bit messy in its delivery. 

The tale presents Chaney Jr as mentalist Alex Gregor, who is provoked by an intoxicated non-believer in his audience that he is a fake, so out of anger, hypnotizes the individual spurring a heart attack that leads to the man’s untimely death.

Gregor is now consumed with grief and then turns within himself, ending his relationship with assistant Maura (Evelyn Ankers in a subdued performance, albeit still a strong one) and runs away to work as a lecturer for an old friend, Mme Valerie Monet (Tala Birell).

Trouble creeps up once more however when Valerie also turns up dead and Gregor becomes prime suspect number one.

The continuing theme involved with the Inner Sanctum Mysteries centres around mystery, intrigue and in the case of the movies, a wronged man troubled with murder most foul.

The Frozen Ghost has to shift and change on numerous occasions to accommodate the plight of its lead protagonist, who tries to figure out if he truly is responsible for the death of these individuals through the use of paranormal abilities.

The road isn’t a straight one to the conclusion and the perpetrators are all too obvious, so the attempt at clever deception is lost much to the detriment of the film.

The performances are still strong regardless, but unfortunately the executions is just too weak. 

  • Saul Muerte

Retrospective: Weird Woman (1944)

06 Wednesday Jan 2021

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For their second outing under the Inner Sanctum Mysteries umbrella, Universal would turn their attention to a novel by Fritz Leiber called Conjure Wife.
The novel has since been adapted a further couple of times with Night of the Eagle (1962) an Witches Brew (1980) and tells the tale of Professor Norman Reed (Chaney Jr. once again taking lead duties) who falls in love and marries with a woman, Paula (Anne Gwynne) who he meets while abroad.
When they return to the Professor’s hometown, the couple receive a somewhat frosty response from the community, especially as Paula associates herself with the tribal beliefs and voodoo associations that she had been accustomed to during her time on the islands of the South Seas.

These negative views turn sinister once stage things begin to occur, including the death of one of Professor Reed’s colleagues. 

All eyes are on Paula, the outsider, but is she really to blame or is there something else kicking the hornet’s nest?

Weird Woman doesn’t necessarily strike as strongly as the previous Inner Sanctum feature, Calling Dr. Death, playing a fairly simple plotline with some questionable choices under today’s standards, but the highlight for me was Evelyn Ankers who was often paired with Chaney Jr. in Universal films around this time including The Wolf Man and Ghost of Frankenstein.
Here she plays the jealous Ilona, infatuated with Professor Reed and longs to be by his side. Ankers taps into this character drive with such conviction that it elevates her amongst her costars and provides an enjoyable watch to a fairly mediocre movie.

  • Saul Muerte

Retrospective: The Mad Ghoul (1943)

13 Sunday Dec 2020

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Presented with his first top billing for Universal, Turhan Bey (The Mummy’s Tomb) has been slowly rising through the ranks to be given this recognition. Much like his co-star Evelyn Ankers (The Wolf Man) who gets her time to shine in the spotlight. 

The Mad Ghoul centres on an Ancient Mayan life-preserving technique that resurrects creatures after they have shuffled off this mortal coil. Attempting to play out this diabolical task is a mad scientist, (naturally) Dr. Alfred Morris (George Zucci – The Mummy’s Hand) who sets about to prove it possible using a human subject.
Morris enlists the help of his student, Ted (David Bruce) to carry out his experiments. Ted however is too infatuated with Isabel (Ankers), but his love is not reciprocated, and when Morris too succumbs to Isabel’s charms, he decides to eradicate his opposition by performing his scientific query on Ted, and succeeds in doing so. The catch is that, in order to stay alive, Ted must continually replace his heart with that of the recently deceased. So throughout the film, Morris leads Ted in a ghoulish state to cemeteries in order to dig up the dead and steal their myocardium. There is great humour to be found here as both gentlemen mooch around attaining hearts so that they can eventually win the heart of Isabel.

Isabel, though, has her eyes for only one man, Eric Iverseon (Bey) and as such, Eric becomes the target for destruction. 

Morris’ grip on the situation begins to dwindle, trying to keep Ted as his ghoulish puppet, to carry out his dastardly deeds, but his pursuits eventually come untangled as his command loses its strength and Ted develops a will of his own.

For a film that uses some of Universal’s former motifs, The Mad Ghoul does enough to cobble a story together that connects with the audience and whilst it doesn’t stand up to some of the stronger titles that have come before it, entertains nonetheless and proves to be a solid enough encounter.

  • Saul Muerte

Retrospective: Son of Dracula (1943)

02 Wednesday Dec 2020

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After a successful resurrection of their key horror monsters through the early monsters with The Invisible Man, Kharis aka The Mummy, Frankenstein’s Monster and the birth of the tragic Larry Talbot – The Wolfman, it would be inevitable that Universal would turn their attention to Count Dracula.
The trouble is the Count was destroyed in the climax of the 1931 movie by the hands of his foe Van Helsing.
In 1936 Universal stepped around this issue by introducing an offspring in the form of Dracula’s daughter, Countess Marya Zaleska, but with her demise also coming at the film’s conclusion. 

The answer would be presented by the Siodmak brothers Curt and Robert, who produce another heir in the mysterious Count Alucard. 

Part of the film’s appeal is choosing to set the story in New Orleans, not only because it brings the gothic tale Stateside, but as a location is itself rich in mysteries and folklore.

Set on a plantation owned by an elderly Colonel, where one of his two daughters, Katherine (Louise Allbritton) has a morbid fascination with the occult to the point where she has invited the afore-mentioned Alucard to stay with them.
When Alucard arrives (played by Universal’s A-Lister Lon Chaney Jr, which may have been a way to appease the star having been overlooked for the role of the phantom in The Phantom of the Opera, a role initially made famous by his father) it is soon apparent that he is of the ‘undead’ and after he pays a visit to the Colonel, the latter is found dead from a supposed heart attack.
The land and titles are left to the Colonel’s two daughters, but Katherine seems only interested in the estate “Dark Oaks” and not of the money which she happily relinquishes to her sister Claire (Evelyn Ankers).
Despite being betrothed to her long time boyfriend Frank, she supposedly jilts him for Alucard, who is not so cryptically revealed to be an ascendant of Count Dracula. Frank then in a fit of rage tries to shoot and kill Count Alucard, but the bullets simply pass through him and into Katherine, killing her instantly. The flip here though is that Katherine is already part of the ‘undead’ club having been transformed by Dracula and has claimed her wish for an immortal life.

Son of Dracula plays nicely with the mythology of Dracula and vampires, as we see numerous instances taking on the form of either the vampire bat or a cloud of mist providing him the ability to transform or travel at whim as long as he is granted an invitation of course.
Where the film adds its own flavour comes through the Katherine plot device which is revealed to be a plan to overthrow Dracula and entice Frank to join her in the afterlife.
This decision is a welcome inclusion to the franchise as it makes a more sinister approach to the central characters and this curious fascination that people have taken to the dark arts.
Possibly a logical step in the canon even if it does make Dracula secondary to the evil on screen and overshadowing his threat to a degree. 

  • Saul Muerte

Retrospective: Captive Wild Woman (1943)

27 Friday Nov 2020

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No doubt when Universal were bandying around the idea behind Captive Wild Woman, they thought they potentially had another horror film franchise on their hands in the tale of an Ape Woman with humanistic tendencies.
The result however, was received with mixed feelings, in part due to its abomination of religious doctrination that caused one of several changes to the script, which would ultimately take around two years before it was greenlit.
By this time the kernel of the story had undergone a transformation not unlike its subject that morphed into a hybrid version of the original concept. 

The story gathered together a collection of characters, starting with animal trainer Fred Mason (Milburn Stone) who returns from safari with a series of animals to be used in the Whipple Circus. Chief among these is Cheela, the afore-mentioned gorilla, played by stuntman Ray ‘Crash’ Corrigan.

Accompanying Mason is his fiance Beth (Evelyn Ankers, now establishing herself as a stable actor for the studio following The Wolf Man and The Ghost of Frankenstein) whose sister, Dorothy (Martha MacVicar) is suffering from undisclosed health problems. In steps our antagonist and a dialled down John Carradine (The Invisible Man’s Revenge) as Dr Walters.

Walters is your typical mad scientist villain, a carbon copy of Dr Frankenstein with his malicious  pursuit of science at the cost of all those around him. In this instance Walters is hellbent in transforming the gene pull to change a living creature such as the gorilla into human form. He succeeds in doing so but like Frankenstein realises that in order to be truly successful, he must use a human brain and here his bloody pursuit amplifies starting with his assistant, but when this takes a turn for the worse, he sets his sights on Beth.

The human form of Cheela would be played by the exotic Acquanetta, who was a self-proclaimed Native American and would go on to reprise her role in the sequel Jungle Woman. Cheela has a hidden power over creatures which plays well at the circus and she becomes part of the act. She also has a fond connection with Mason and becomes incredibly jealous of his fiance Beth. This puts Beth against two adversaries and the rest of the tale leads to whether or not she will survive.

The film feels a little stale in places as we struggle with the plentiful shots of Mason in the ring taming the wild cats. It does help to have Carradine’s manic performance to keep the audience interested in the outcome, but it does limp along in the process. The surprise is that it generated not only one but two sequels… but more on those at another time.

  • Saul Muerte

Retrospective: The Wolf Man (1941)

08 Saturday Aug 2020

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The introduction of The Wolf Man would mark the last of the iconic stable monsters to come out of Universal studios during its golden age of horror. Along with it comes arguably one of the production houses’ most tragic characters in Larry Talbot. Talbot’s heartfelt sorrow is all the more pained due to his magnificent portrayal by Lon Chaney Jr, who after impressing in Man-Made Monster finally got to take on a lead-role as the doomed hero. 

In many ways the feature would serve as a signature to the passing of the torch from the old to the new with Chaney Jr ably supported by Claude Rains (The Invisible Man) as Larry’s father Sir John, and Bela Lugosi (Dracula) as Bela the Gypsy. The latter is all the more on the snout as Bela harbours the secret of being a lycanthrope and literally bites Talbot, transforming him and turning him into the monster. 

The strength of the cast doesn’t end there though, and this is part of the beauty of this film and why quite honestly, it still resonates today. With Ralph Bellamy (Rosemary’s Baby), Patric Knowles (Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man), Evelyn Ankers (The Ghost of Frankenstein), but none more striking than Maria Ouspenskaya as Maleva, The Gypsy Fortune Teller.
Her role would lend significant weight and drama to Talbot’s plight and add a dash of the mysticism behind the mythology. She would reprise her role once more in Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man. 

Curt Siodmak would return once more as the screenwriter, in arguably his finest work, which is partly to do with him drawing from his own tragic history of segregation and oppressed Jew under the Nazi regime, a topic that doesn’t get lost in the narrative as Bela and Larry are both marked by the pentagram as part of their curse.

In this story, Talbot returns to his ancestral home to reunite with his estranged father.
Whilst there, he becomes infatuated with a local girl, Gwen, only to succumb to a wolf attack.
At first, Talbot believes that his plight is all too real, but when he heals so swiftly, he starts to question his own sanity, before the physical changes begin to occur.
From here, he withdraws from the world, not knowing who to turn to, afraid of what he might do.

Now that mythology is the stuff of legend, and many have transpired to go above and beyond where it all began with numerous tales of the shapeshifting beast.
The effects have come in leaps and bounds since this film, but a huge nod must go out to make up guru Jack Pierce who would produce the now infamous look from his own personal kit, including yak hair that was glued to Chaney Jr’s face in a laborious procedure.
The Wolf Man would go on to feature in a further four sequels, all featuring Chaney Jr (the only actor to play the role), which is part of its appeal, and one of the key characteristics of Talbot is his ‘nice guy’ personality that is conflicted with this plague. 

The film is iconic and despite being nearly 80 years old, is still solid.
A testament to the talent involved in its creation and Siodmak’s screenplay. As my journey through the Universal horror archive, this was a welcome shift in the positive direction.

  • Saul Muerte